No End in Sight
In autumn 1980 yet another underground test in Nevada sent radiation off-site.129 For residents it was a bad case
of deja vu.
Utah governor Scott M. Matheson was disgusted. "This lack of communication is too much like what occurred
between the state of Utah and the Atomic Energy Commission . . . 30 years ago," the governor asserted in a letter to
the U.S. Department of Energy. "I object to the disregard for the rights of Utahns to know when there is even the
possibility of risk for increased radioactivity in our state as a result of nuclear testing in Nevada."130
Indeed, events had followed a classic pattern. The Energy Department waited twelve hours after detection of the
September 25 radioactive leakage before alerting the Environmental Protection Agency, the federal department
responsible for off-site monitoring of radiation.131 Despite public assurances by DOE that radiation "is not expected
to leave the Nevada Test Site," the EPA later reported finding radioactive xenon gas near the California border.132
Like Utah state officials, California authorities learned of the nuclear accident from the news media—about four
hours after EPA was informed of the problem, and a full sixteen hours after on-site DOE personnel reportedly
discovered the leak.133 Meanwhile less than eighteen hours after the mishap the radioactive gas traveled forty miles
in a southwesterly direction and reached Lathrop Wells, a small Nevada town about ten miles from the California
line.134
EPA spokesman Chuck Costa acknowledged, when we interviewed him, that his agency did not have monitoring
equipment available in California capable of detecting radioactive gases such as xenon. The only such EPA monitors
were stationed in Nevada, he said. As for the delay in revealing the leak, Costa—EPA’s deputy director for nuclear
radiation assessment—said that "there was an obvious screw-up in communication over at DOE. They should have
called us much earlier than they did."135
When we asked DOE for comment, the response was tight-lipped. "We feel that they were notified in what we
considered to be a timely manner," test-site spokesman David Jackson said. "That was the way it was, and I have no
further comment.136
The U.S. Government has remained especially anxious to retain its nuclear testing prerogative in Nevada. Federal
officials would be hard pressed to find another state hospitable to such activities. After nuclear tests in 1969 and
1973 Colorado voters passed a referendum requiring ballot approval of any further atomic blasts within the state.137
In southern Mississippi two underground atomic explosions during the mid-1960s occurred near the town of
Hattiesburg. A decade and a half later, an Associated Press dispatch noted, Governor Cliff Finch urged families
nearby to evacuate "after the University of Mississippi reported that scientists had found radioactive and deformed
toads, frogs, and a lizard above the Tatum Salt Dome, a shelf of salt used in the 1960s for nuclear explosions." Tests
of one frog detected radioactivity one thousand times normal.138
At Carlsbad, New Mexico, a 1961 underground nuclear test, named Gnome, sent radiation airborne. Two years
later, in congressional testimony, Dr. Eric Reiss said that the Gnome test "delivered sufficient fallout to the vicinity
of Carlsbad, New Mexico, to cause thyroid dose levels of from 7 to 55 rads to children."139
There are strong indications the radioactivity caused second-generation genetic defects. Dr. Catherine Armstrong,
a pediatrician in Carlsbad since 1950, told us that during thirty-one years of practice she noticed a startling upswing
of serious congenital damage apparent at birth. That trend did not get under way until well after the underground
atomic blast vented radiation in 1961.140
"Young people coming along are having a noticeable increase of congenital abnormalities, much more than we
used to have in this area," Dr. Armstrong said in a 1981 interview. "Congenital heart diseases" have been far more
prevalent, along with increased bone defects, severely immature livers, and jaundice among newborns in the
Carlsbad community. Dr. Armstrong noticed that those problems became conspicuous during the mid-1970s—years
when many area residents who were small children at the time of the Gnome nuclear test began raising families.
"It’s got to be more than coincidental," she declared.141
As with every presidency since Franklin D. Roosevelt was in the White House, the administration of Ronald
Reagan eagerly embraced nuclear testing as part of national defense. The desert of southern Nevada has become the
place where America culminates work on the nuclear weapons development assembly line. Even without detonation
in combat, those atomic warheads have been endangering the lives of many Americans and of future generations
around the world.
"Our nuclear program was built in the name of national security—protecting the lives of Americans,"
Congresswoman Patricia Schroeder commented in 1980. "One can’t help but wonder, who was protected and at
whose expense?."142
129. The Oregonian, Associated Press, September 28, 1980.
130. The Tribune (Salt Lake), October 9, 1980.
131. DOE spokesman David Jackson and EPA official Chuck Costa, interviews, September 1980.
132. The Oregonian, September 28, 1980; Costa, interview, September 1980.
133. James Mahoney, California Department of Health Services, and Alvin Rickers, state of Utah, interviews, September 1980.
134. The Oregonian, September 28, 1980; Costa, interview, September 1980.
135. Costa, interview, September 1980.
136. Jackson, interview, September 1980. But nuclear health physics pioneer Karl Z. Morgan was far from complacent about the delay. "It’s very important that
appropriate monitoring be done. If you wait till the cloud has passed over, you miss entirely what was in it," Dr. Morgan said. (Morgan, interview,
September 1980.)
137. Anna Gyorgy and Friends, NO NUKES: Everyone’s Guide to Nuclear Power (Boston: South End Press, 1979), p. 443.
138. Boston Globe, Associated Press, May 26, 1979.
139. Fallout, Radiation Standards and Countermeasures, August 1963, Part 2.
140. Dr. Catherine Armstrong, interview, May 1981.
141. Ibid.
142. Patricia Schroeder, press release statement, April 12, 1980.